US energy prices would skyrocket under EU-style regime, says report

A ‘$676 billion drag on the economy’ by going down the EU path, or ‘nearly half a trillion dollars’ from fracking? The U.S. chose fracking, as The Daily Caller points out.

The U.S. would lose more than 7 million jobs if it adopted the kind of energy policies popular in many European countries, according to a report published Friday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The European energy policies would impose a $676 billion drag on the U.S. economy, the report states, and result in Americans paying an extra $4,800 per year to heat their homes.

The price increase would ultimately lead to the loss of several million U.S. jobs, according to the report, which is part of a series of studies conducted by the group leading up to the presidential election. The group compared U.S. and European energy prices between 2008 and 2014.

“The types of policies being advocated by leading candidates, such as restricting energy production and imposing new mandates, would drive up energy prices and reduce America’s global competitiveness,” said Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy. — The group’s report is part of a series of studies the group has conducted detailing what the U.S. and the natural gas industry would look like were anti-fossil fuel proponents given the key to power the U.S. energy grid.

The fracking revolution generated more than 4.3 million jobs in the U.S. and injected nearly half a trillion dollars into the economy over the course of the past 10 years, according to another analysis conducted by the group in September. The analysis found that all those jobs would have been lost if environmentalists prevailed in shifting energy policies away from natural gas and toward solar and wind.

The group’s anti-fossil fuel rhetoric that’s permeating this year’s election, would result in the loss of more than 100,000 jobs associated with oil and gas development on federal lands, as well as indirectly impact another 280,000 jobs across the U.S.